First of (Likely) Many...

Eowyn fell off the monkey bars at school yesterday and hit her eye on the way down. Thankfully, she didn't split it open and require stitches.






Day 2---a little deeper bruising and puffier




Still smiling though...and currently running around outside.

Easter

Easter was at our house this year. Saturday Adrian and the girls dyed eggs. Avril sang in the children's choir at church. After church, we got ready for dinner. It was really nice, especially since the house is generally clean for showing I really didn't have to do anything--ha! My mom and Ron and step-sister, Jodi, and her family came over. We had a yummy dinner and then the much anticipated Easter egg hunt. We all really enjoyed the day. My nieces spent the night with us. After all the excitement and sugar, they finally started to get tired and watched a movie before bed. I was very pleased that they were all asleep before 10. The next morning we had fun playing games and hanging around until we got a call--at 9am--to show the house--at 10am. So in addition to putting the house back together after 5 girls playing we also had to get dressed. But between the 7 of us we had it looking great and were out the door in 45 minutes. Go us!
p.s. Sorry about the weird placement of the pictures. If you double click them they will enlarge.










































































































And here's two bonus pictures. We have a LOT of pollen being surrounded by all the pine trees. It's crazy. Poor little pollen kitty.

Progress

This was our house when we moved in last summer. It hadn't been lived in for a while and I think the weeds support that statement. We have slowly worked on improving our status from "trashiest yard in the neighborhood" to "decent yard in the neighborhood". For the record, this neighborhood has a lot beautiful yards. The people take great pride in their homes. So it's been hard to wait for planting season to come. But the day (yesterday) finally arrived. The piece of paper up in the window was a sign mentioning the name of the landscaping company who was maintaining the yard.--yikes!



And the end result...







Thank you Dad and Jill for your wonderful Christmas gift of gift cards to the nursery. Adrian and Eowyn went on Friday after school and bought the flowers. We are loving such a thoughtful gift!



We also pulled all of the matted pine straw and weeds off of the small flower beds around the shed out back. Eowyn bought three packs of flower seeds with some of her gift card money so they planted those seeds. It's not as impressive a picture--just dirt, but you don't see weeds. Hopefully, we'll have pretty, colorful flowers soon.



These other few are from inside the house. It's amazing that we have worked for so long inside the house, and really, a stranger walking in would never know it. What they notice is that they don't notice anything, meaning comments like "Wow, there's a lot of work to do here." should not be uttered. Avril asked if we are living in Antarctica now that everything is SO white. She's got a point, but our desire is to make the house appealing to any buyer. The hallway is the most noticeable change. It was so dark with all the dark wood trim and doors, but now it is very, very bright.

I am really happy with how nice the house is looking. I don't know yet where we will be come this fall. If Adrian is able to get a job locally and we stay, then I will be happy with all our hard work that we've already finished and can keep making the house look nice...and put some color on the walls. If Adrian gets a job out of the area, then I hope the work will encourage someone to buy the house.

Valentine's Day

It's been a while, but I wanted to put on our pictures from Valentine's Day. Adrian scheduled a weekend of activities. On Saturday we all went to the Botanical Gardens. It was so lovely out that day and we had a wonderful time. Then we ate lunch at Golden Corral. The girls thought this was Heaven--especially when they saw the self-serve ice cream bar. Can you say 'sugar overload'? Sunday after church was Jammies Day and we snacked and hung out all day. It doesn't get much better than that. Then Monday night Adrian and I went out to dinner. It was wonderful. So without further ado...here are the pics.


Rascal joined us (from Eowyn's class) for the weekend.


Eowyn has a talent for walking into pictures that she's not
supposed to be in. This one, however, turned out fabulous.

A pink and blue kind of day.


Avril and Maia wanted a picture with Rascal on the eagle. Do
you see who's trying to sneak in?



Avril posed us like this and took the picture--hehe--but
it's a great picture.


I think Maia took this one. He's so handsome.

Appalachain Thanksgiving

We had a great opportunity to travel out to Murphy, NC (Adrian's hometown) for Thanksgiving this year. Norfolk Christian's school schedule was such that there was some extra time that allowed for us to get out there without it being too compressed. So we headed west on Tuesday afternoon and got there without any difficulty. We are so blessed that the girls are amazing travelers. They sit very patiently for all those (10-11) hours. Typically, we stop for a long meal and let the girls play. It really helps. Our time in Murphy was--as always--very quiet and peaceful. There really is nothing to do so it is a very restful time and we love going out there. The girls have so much fun with much room to run and climb on the hills. The mornings were very cold but each day warmed up and was sunny and beautiful. We took walks down to the tressel bridge on the old train tracks that run (literally) right out of Sandra's yard. We played at the park and of course ate a lovely meal on Thursday. On Saturday mid-morning we headed back to Chesapeake. The best gift was that Adrian's grandfather, Mike, came down from Ohio to spend the holiday with all of us. It was a treasure as Mike is 92 now and we try to see him at least once a year. This usually happens at Christmas when we travel to Ohio, but this year Adrian is having shoulder surgery to repair damage resulting from a lifetime of sports. That is scheduled for Dec. 19 and we will not be going anywhere after that. The only surprising event came about 30 minutes before we left for home. It was then that we decided to bring a puppy that had been hanging around Sandra's house for three days back home with us.

So here's that story. On Thanksgiving the puppy followed Avril home as she walked up to Sandra's house. He'd been down the hill at another home and Avril assumed that was his home. She tried to return him, but no one was there. So it stuck around in Sandra's yard all day and was still there Friday morning. By late Friday afternoon Sandra had spoken to everyone nearby and all had assumed that it was someone else's puppy. He had a collar and looked in good condition. But no one had any idea of where he belonged. The thinking became that maybe he'd been abandoned. This is particularly amazing because this is a Rotweiller, not a mutt. Clearly, someone had paid good money for this dog. Perhaps an Atlanta family lost him. In Murphy though there is not a lot hope at the animal shelter. It's just different than the city. Regardless, it was heartbreaking to think of this tiny puppy left to survive on his own in the mountains. It may seem that all the while we were thinking about keeping him, but that really isn't the case. We don't want a puppy right now. That is not a responsiblity we're interested in. However, Sandra was also leaving on Saturday about hour after we left and after that the puppy was completely alone. Had she been staying, it would have not been an issue to leave him. She would've found someone to adopt the dog. We just felt like we could find a good home for the puppy so a few minutes before leaving we decided to take him with us. We stopped at Wal-mart (there is one there now) on the way out and got a little crate and bag of food. It'd certainly been a while since he had slept anywhere warm or eaten. We dreaded the thought of traveling with a dog in holiday traffic. But he seemed so happy to be somewhere warm and soft, that he never made a sound--for 11 hours! He was amazing. We couldn't believe it. We kept saying that he was making a strong case for getting a good home. On Sunday we took him over to my mom and Ron's house to see if they would like to keep him. He has been there this week and they will let us know by early next week what their decision is. If they choose not to keep him, we'll keep looking. He's a good dog. We all very quickly became attached. I hope we can find him a loving family. I'll let you know.

p.s. I know these pictures are small. If you double click on them, they will open up to a larger image.